Chagos Betrayal

With U-turn number 3167, Labour’s proposed treaty to transfer Chagos to Mauritius has now been pulled from ratification, at least for the time being. That pause is welcome, but it is an indictment that Starmer ever pushed this far.

Chagos is a remote chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, best known for Diego Garcia, home to a major UK–US military base. The historical backdrop is shameful: the Chagossians were forcibly removed in the late twentieth century to facilitate the base, and then blocked for decades from returning. That injustice is real, and Britain owes them a serious remedy, not another elite stitch-up dressed as “decolonisation”.

The recent political saga began under the Conservatives, who opened negotiations with Mauritius in pursuit of a diplomatic “settlement”. But it was Starmer’s Labour that chose to sign the deal: transferring sovereignty of the entire archipelago to Mauritius while leasing back Diego Garcia for 99 years, at huge cost to British taxpayers. Predictably, the treaty provoked backlash at home and abroad - including criticism from Donald Trump - and now the government has quietly stepped back, shelving the legislation rather than forcing it through Parliament.

At this point the argument has been muddied by deliberately dishonest language. The BBC have described Labour’s plan as to “give back” Chagos. That framing is propaganda. Mauritius never owned Chagos. Whatever colonial administrative arrangements existed, there is no clean story of Britain returning stolen Mauritian territory. Starmer was not “righting a wrong” - he was attempting to transfer strategic territory to a third-party state, then pay to rent some of it back.

And Diego Garcia really does matter. It is one of the West’s most valuable military assets: a platform for long-range air operations, intelligence, logistics, and deterrence across the Middle East and Indo-Pacific. In an era of rising instability, surrendering sovereignty and trusting that a lease will protect British and allied interests is strategic self-harm. Treaties can be reopened. Governments change. Pressure campaigns escalate. Geography does not.

Supporters of the deal wave away concerns about Mauritius, but that is complacent. Mauritius is not an enemy - but it is plainly exposed to influence. A resurgent China has spent years building leverage through trade, finance, and infrastructure across strategically important regions. Creating any additional opening near a critical Western base is unnecessary risk, especially when the UK is already signalling weakness elsewhere.

This fits a wider pattern of the British state appeasing China while calling it “pragmatism”: indulging plans for a mega Chinese embassy in London despite obvious security concerns, offering limp responses over Hong Kong and the persecution of Jimmy Lai, and failing to draw hard lines after the Manchester consulate scandal where Chinese officials were implicated in violence on British soil. It is the same mindset: avoid confrontation, trade away principle, then act surprised when pressure increases.

But the most damning point is also the simplest: the Chagossians themselves were never properly asked. They are ethnically and culturally distinct, and most do not consider themselves Mauritian. Yet Starmer’s government treated them as a footnote, bargaining over their homeland as if they were an inconvenience to be managed, rather than a people with rights.

For now, pausing this deal is the right outcome. But nobody should relax. Starmer has already shown he is willing to trade away sovereignty for a press release. The danger is not resolved, only postponed. Britain should drop this surrender plan permanently, stop laundering geopolitics as morality, and finally put Chagossian self-determination first.